It is a rare 18-year-old who spends their first pay cheque on a print by the early modern Japanese painter Tsuguharu Foujita, but then, few people are like Alain Mallart. The French financier describes himself as ‘a mischievous and atypical lover of life’. It is a quality he shares with his wife, the vivacious Danute, a former actor from Lithuania, whom he met in Paris. ‘We are complete opposites,’ says Danute, ‘but what brought us together was a love of opera, literature and curiosity.’
Over the past 30 years, the couple have created a masterful collection of modern and contemporary art and design — one that draws its inspiration from a variety of sources, ranging from the operas of Wagner and Monteverdi to long summer nights on the Baltic coast. It is a surprising meeting of minds between two people who began life in very different circumstances: Alain in Paris, where he took refuge from his lonely childhood in the city’s art museums; and Danute in Cold War Lithuania, who discovered a love of photography and Constructivism while studying music at the Moscow Conservatory.
The Mallarts’ collection is situated across three residences, in Brussels, Paris and Vilnius. Each is distinctive and in tune with its surroundings: the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris, the grounds of La Cambre Abbey in Brussels, and the extraordinary biodiversity of Vilnius, one of Europe’s greenest cities. Danute says there was no specific strategy regarding the placement of artworks. ‘I love it when a work comes into the house and finds its place between periods and objects,’ she says. ‘That is what I call rhythm.’
